Among the many most fascinating elements of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (all of us knew that was coming). It was about an outdated good friend.
Musk testified that one in every of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling-out with Google’s Larry Web page over AI security — particularly, a dialog through which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Web page shrugged it off as “nice,” as long as AI itself survived. Web page referred to as Musk a “speciest” for being “professional human.” Musk referred to as the angle “insane.”
That’s largely notable given how shut the 2 as soon as have been. Fortune included them on its 2016 record of secretly best-friend enterprise leaders; Musk was so comfy with Web page that he repeatedly crashed at his Palo Alto house. Web page as soon as informed Charlie Rose that he’d slightly give his money to Musk than to charity.
The friendship didn’t survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to assist launch the corporate in 2015, Web page felt personally betrayed and reduce off contact.
It’s a narrative Musk has informed earlier than — together with to creator Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — however Tuesday was the primary time he mentioned it beneath oath. Web page hasn’t commented, and it’s price remembering the whole lot that Musk mentioned was in service of a lawsuit. Nonetheless, as just lately as 2023 he informed tech podcaster Lex Fridman he needed to patch issues up: “We have been pals for a really very long time.”
